1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a print pattern generating apparatus including a novel format pattern generating unit for use with a printer in which the character and/or numeral information is printed on a sheet together with a desired format pattern and more particularly, to a print pattern generating apparatus including a generating unit which prepares a plurality of format patterns, including, for example, complicated ruled lines and characters, and provides a pattern signal of any desired one of the format patterns for the printing purpose.
2. Description of the Prior Art
When recording output information from an electronic computer or the like on a format such as an account book leaf, it has been usual to prepare a recording paper on which a predetermined format pattern is printed and to record the output information on the paper. According to the prior art method, however, prior to the recording operation, it is required to select a recording paper from several recording papers printed with different format patterns and set the selected recording paper in a recording unit or printer. This operation requires additional work and the need of an additional operator for such work.
To resolve this problem, it has been tried to use a plain paper sheet without any format pattern, as a recording paper, and print thereon a selected one of the format patterns, which are prepared preliminarily in the printer, together with desired information derived from an electronic computer.
In one apparatus for this purpose, a format pattern recorded on a film is projected upon a photosensitive drum of a printer of the electrographic type and character information to be printed is superimposed thereon. Generally, the printer of the electrographic type is arranged such that an electrostatic latent image is formed on the charged photosensitive drum by scanning thereon with a beam of light such as for example a laser beam, toners are deposited on the latent image electrostatically, and then transferred to the recording paper to be fixed thereon. By using such a printer and film recorded with a format pattern disposed adjacent to the photosensitive drum, the format pattern is projected upon the photosensitive drum to form a latent image of the format pattern, and then the character latent image is formed by the light scanning method in superimposed relationship with the format latent image.
This conventional method is advantageous in that the preliminarily prepared format patterns are visible, but disadvantageous in that a sophisticated mechanism is required for automatic selection of a desired one of the prepared format patterns and irregular rotation of the photosensitive drum may cause relative displacement between the format pattern latent image and the character latent image which is formed according to information delivered from the electronic computer.
In an alternative conventional method, a format pattern is divided into regions in the form of square frames each having a size corresponding to the size of one printed character, patterns of the individual square frames are represented by suitable codes. In this way any format is represented by and stored in the form of a combination of the codes. A pattern generator is provided for generating any of the patterns corresponding to the individual codes, and an output of the pattern generator and an output of a character generator for generating output information regarding a character or the like are derived together in parallel and for recording them on a suitable medium.
This conventional method is advantageous in that it does not need such a sophisticated mechanism for selecting a desired format from a number of formats and displacement of print as encountered with the preceding conventional method, but disadvantageous in that the format is required to be decomposed into a number of standard components and it cannot be applied to printing of formats such as carrying characters or the like other than the standard components.
In many applications, it is desired to use a format including, in addition to ruled lines, a title and/or remarks whose characters are greatly different in size from ordinary characters, and figures of company insignia and seal impression. The conventional method is not adaptive to printing such a format.